This post is only to get feedback, if possible, about how VirtualBox and Calibre work in 11.0.

I've installed a FreeBSD 11.0 in another disk into my laptop to see how all things work. I choose FreeBSD to get more control when partitioning the disk to avoid interferences with the main disk, where gbsd10.3 is installed. I was pretty satisfied until I detected 2 major problems for me:

1) VirtualBox machines I had created with GhostBSD 10.3 tend to almost get frozen after several minutes, and the virtualbox window have to be killed to abort. Same virtual machines in GhostBSD 10.3 (main disk) run smoothly.

2) I use regularly Calibre with my ebook reader (Sony PRS-T3). In GhostBSD 10.3 Calibre runs smoothly too, everything works, the device is well detected, book transfers as well, etc. But in FreeBSD 11.0, the complete system reboots itself (rarely seen nowadays in FreeBSD/GhostBSD) 1 or 2 minutes after Calibre detects the ebook reader. The ebook reader connects to the laptop via a usb 2.0 port (I've seen problems in the past with 3.0 ports and FreeBSD).

My main concern is if this weird things could happen in GhostBSD 11.0. So my intention now is to keep using 10.3 for serious work and 11.0 only in a test machine/disk.

I must say that GhostBSD 10.3 is the best freebsd based release/flavour I've tested ever (and I've used 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, etc. and several pcbsd versions). Everything works, it's awesome. One can forget Linux forever. (many thanks once again to all GhostBSD team). But I'm not so sure with 11.0.

As you may know, we are currently working on building our own pkgs repositories, and it turned out to be an heavier task than what was supposed initially; we also planned to make use of them with the upcoming GhostBSD-11 release, (for various technical reasons), and there was no plan to do the same for GhostBSD-10.3.

However, based on your feedback we might reconsider that, although at this point in time it look like quite difficult thing to accomplish.

By the way, the two apps you mentioned are among the most difficult to support:
VirtualBox doesn't provide official support for any BSD os;
Calibre, run under "wine" emulator, with all drawbacks that that imply.

Anyway, I would expect that both apps will improve in the near future on 11-RELEASE.

As for the OS itself (as distinguished from packages), I can assure you that 11-RELEASE improved in many areas, and at least on some of my machine it run better than 10.3.

We will discuss about the chance to build repositories for 10.3, and if possible we will do that.

* I'd be more confortable with the current 10.3 repositories, following the official 10.3 FreeBSD release, because right now everything (as fas as I know) work well. So I wouldn't make any change in GhostBSD 10.3 in this sense.

* Calibre in 10.3 and 11.0 doesn't need wine. My problems with Calibre in 11.0 could be due to something in my machine, not to package itself. So my post was to gather feedback from other users.

VirtualBox is a must for me, due to my job. I hope it works well in GhostBSD 11.0. But previously to upgrade my main system, I'll do some tests before. And yes, it's a pitty VBox doesn't support FreeBSD. Maybe with bhyve we can get rid of it in the future.

I deduce from your answer that when GhostBSD 11.0 is installed, you are force to upgrade using official repositories. If I choose FreeBSD repositories, then something could break, true?

Jes wrote:
* I'd be more confortable with the current 10.3 repositories, following the official 10.3 FreeBSD release, because right now everything (as fas as I know) work well. So I wouldn't make any change in GhostBSD 10.3 in this sense.

Very likely things will remain as is, unfortunately this setup doesn't allow for updates of our own packages, and that's one of the reason why we decided to implement our own repositories.

* Calibre in 10.3 and 11.0 doesn't need wine. My problems with Calibre in 11.0 could be due to something in my machine, not to package itself. So my post was to gather feedback from other users.

I must have confure calibre dependency with some other package.

VirtualBox is a must for me, due to my job. I hope it works well in GhostBSD 11.0. But previously to upgrade my main system, I'll do some tests before. And yes, it's a pitty VBox doesn't support FreeBSD. Maybe with bhyve we can get rid of it in the future.

I'm too an heavy user of virtualbox, I hope too it will work well/better.

I deduce from your answer that when GhostBSD 11.0 is installed, you are force to upgrade using official repositories. If I choose FreeBSD repositories, then something could break, true?

Yes, true. However keep in mind that we are doing that to "improve" the current situation, that's why we have also decided to rebuild practically all ports (vast majority will use FreeBSD defaults settings too), but we will be able to keep the thing in sync: our ports and FreeBSD ports.

If you will use FreeBSD repositories, things may break, but not more than they do right now, so it will be an option if you really want to go that way.

Additionally, upon pkgs upgrade, we will keep live the previous repository, (say at a state of one or two week early), and that would allow a quick recovery in case something go wrong with the updated packages.

There will be also the option to build the packages yourself, we will provide the ports source tree, including the options we used, user that would like to customize their settings will be allowed to do it properly.

If that is not enough, this forum is open for further suggestion, we will certainly consider the feedback from our users, so it is not the our repository will be forced upon you, it will be an opportunity to make the things better.